Honestly, I’m a solar powered runner, but here are the reasons I thought through while running with Fletcher tonight in support of running at night.
1. While tonight’s event was a second run for me coupled with today’s early morning run, I found wearing running sandals at night often keeps my streak alive.
2. Time is the second factor; later at night my time is my time for the most part, the later all the more so. The events of the day are done and my night time running is my time.
3. I like training when I know there’s almost no one else training-certainly not out in the country where I live. You can draw mental strength from the fact that you’re still willing to get out there and get your daily training in long past that point in the evening where most people (normal at least, ha ha) have packed it in until another day dawns.
4. Double yellow fever-I live in a very, very rural area and late at night I like to run on the double yellow stripe. I always know when traffic’s coming from either direction long before it gets to me and I feel like I’m getting away with something.
5. Night life. You see things at night that you just won’t see, certainly as often, during the day. We see deer all the time at night and all sorts of other night life.
6. If you want to pursue long distance ultrarunning events, 100K and longer, you’ve really got to train at night if you want to be successfull in those races.
7. Winter weather is almost always tougher and harsher at night. Not great while you’re running THAT night, but you can really draw mental and physical toughness from those winter training nights that pays off in tough races.
8. I still like moving through the woods at night.
9. I get some real use (and training) with my night gear like my headlamps, red lights, etc.
10. Running at night is more quality time with Fletcher the WonderDog.
11. It’s mostly quiet out there at night.
12. If you’re good at running at night, you can be a great runner during the day.
TLH
Marietta, NY

February 2013 has come and, thankfully, gone. Winter’s final full month is always the longest of the season for me and this year’s was no exception. There were a lot of lessons learned, or perhaps re-learned, over the course of 28 days.

With the month started in California due to work, I was running at a base altitude of 6000 feet in Lake Tahoe for a few days, I still spent the lion’s share of the month in central and northern New York. Lake Tahoe for training for work was terrific and I made it a solid running camp in my non-work time too. All my other work was home office in the Finger Lakes, (central-north New York) or on Fort Drum in northern New York. This wasn’t the coldest February on record, but winter seemed to be accompanied by a relentlessly withering wind that really lent an edge to outdoor physical training.

Two days after the 2012 Badwater 135 Ultra, Tim Hardy looks out over the valley from the roadside on the way up to Whitney Portal. Click here to see more from the race. (Doug Hardy photo)

We’re all back from Death Valley and are busy again with our jobs and families, but the memory of 135 miles from Badwater Basin to Whitney Portal are still fresh. We’ll have more to say as we catch up on work and such, but OneAverageRunner Tim Hardy was on the radio in the Syracuse region today for an interview with marathoner/radio host Bob Lonsberry of WSYR.

Hi all – I’m Tim’s brother, Doug, and will be on the support crew at Badwater with Greg Hardy and Dan Hartley to help keep Tim hydrated, fed, safe, and on a pace to finish next week.

We’re going to be using some new tools to provide updates on our progress, but I’d be lying if I said I was sure about how this will work since there are no cellphone towers or wifi access in Death Valley. We have set up a new Twitter account – @1averagerunner – and hopefully will be sending some updates through a some satellite-based gadget called SPOT Connect.

So click on the button below to follow Tim on Twitter or, if you just want to watch his feed through your browser you can visit here. His Twitter feed should also update his Facebook page, so if you’re following Tim on Facebook you should be kept up to date. We’re not sure exactly how it’s all going to work but check back to see what we’ve posted here for info.

The Badwater 135 ultra-marathon is now an immediate 25-meter target; traveling and logistics are all working as I type. This race started out first as a Dream Race rather than a goal after I ran four or five shorter ultras in 2007. Then, when I started really studying this sport, Badwater moved itself to my “What if” category, and finally, “Why not” while I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2009.

During that deployment I was reading about the race on the Badwater website and discovered the Arrowhead 135. The two 135-mile events had an affiliation then based on their distance. I was fascinated by the distance these two events covered while traversing through extremely tough environmental conditions. Arrowhead’s deep winter conditions in northern Minnesota in the first week of February on the Arrowhead snowmobile trail, and then running across Death Valley, Calif. during mid-summer conditions starting at Badwater. My dream of someday completing Badwater developed almost immediately into a hard goal of completing the Arrowhead 135 and Badwater 135 in the same racing season.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but the Barkley Marathons 100 Mile Run sure reduced me to a coward in just over half a lap (12 mi in 08:30). This is a tough post, but if you write about the good events and the good races you’ve got to write about the bad ones, or utter failures. I haven’t thought about too much else since I tapped out 1/4 of the way up the Lookout Tower climb late Saturday at Frozen Head State Park in Wartburg, Tenn.

On my second attempt, I managed to complete the Arrowhead 135 Ultra. Below are my thoughts posted during the race, where I finished 16th overall among those running the frigid course. There were also competitors on bikes and skis.

15 January 2012
www.louisianamarathon.com
I made a late decision to sign up for the Inaugural Louisiana Marathon (LAM) after working on Fort Polk for most of the week leading up to race weekend. I had visibility on the race after checking our race calendars the previous weekend and found the LA 26.2 on www.marathonguide.com. I’m glad for several reasons that I was able to register for this race Saturday and race on Sunday. It’s always a terrific experience to cross any 26.2 mile finish line and this was no exception in Baton Rouge. I like taking part in Inaugural races, and I got to run in a major event in Louisiana and “check” that block in my 50-state mission. I learned a lot in this race, and while this certainly was not a targeted race on even a weekend in the calendar as late as Christmas, in a lot of ways this was maybe the best race I have run to date.

My intent with this document is to post some major points, ideas and lessons I’ve learned as an average Ultra-Marathoner. This is made up more of general training principles and ideas rather than hard and fast training doctrine and monthly, weekly and daily training schedules and guidance.

There is a significant amount of literature available on this topic online, in hard cover, and in monthly magazine publications. For a couple of examples, I really got a lot out of Bryon Powell’s training book, Relentless Forward Progress, available on WWW.IRUNFAR.COM, as well as from an article written by Ian Torrance and published in JAN-FEB 2011 Running Times on marathoners training for and running 50Ks and 50 Mile ultras. I highly recommend those sources to anyone. Along this line, there is a lot of literature and online websites with a lot of ultra-marathon race and training information.